


Closeted

by MilkshakeB



Category: Nero Wolfe - Rex Stout
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Friends to Lovers, Kissing, Light-Hearted, Literal Closets, M/M, POV First Person, Yuletide, Yuletide 2004, awkward makeouts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-22
Updated: 2004-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:53:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1630109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilkshakeB/pseuds/MilkshakeB
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sooner or later, while doing an illegal search, you're going to get into trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Closeted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thefourthvine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefourthvine/gifts).



> Written for thefourthvine

 

 

Fandom: Nero Wolfe  
Pairing: Archie Goodwin/Saul Panzer  
Rating: Mild R

 

There are lots of things that an intelligent, enterprising soul can do when he suddenly finds himself trapped in a woman's closet, unable to make either light or sound. If he is a man who is knowledgeable about such things, he can investigate the clothing around him by touch and try to determine fabrics, cuts, and functions, and from there estimate how much the closet's owner is spending on herself. If he has a particular liking for shoes, he can catalogue the types and varieties lined up along the closet's bottom--again by feel, of course. If he is blind and happens to have brought along a deck of Braille playing cards, he can amuse himself with a game of solitaire, or, if he has a companion who is likewise blind, even a game or two of poker, though calling the bets might have presented a problem, so perhaps a game of gin would have been wiser. Possibly my companion in the particular closet I was trapped in, Saul Panzer, might have had an idea or two, but again the problem with making any noise made it impossible for me to find out, which was a pity, since if anyone could come up with a reasonably engaging way to deal with a situation like the one we found ourselves in, it would have been Saul.

Of course, ideally we were not supposed to have ended up trapped in a closet at all--in fact, according to all logic and precedence we shouldn't have been. There is always a risk, unless you know the subject is being detained elsewhere by someone you can trust to keep them there, that when you discretely slip into and look around someone's home without their permission, they might return and catch you in the act. With Miss Katherine Betts, there had been no such arranged detainment, but a period of surveillance by several operatives, Saul among them, had sufficiently established her habits so that it had seemed like a good bet that we would have had plenty of time to do what we came for and get out. If asked to lay odds, I'd have said thirty to one, at least, which just goes to show you anyone can get stiffed by a bad turn of luck. Or, from a different perspective, a good turn of luck, just not for me, since the reason for our present difficulty lay in Miss Betts coming home from a date several hours earlier than her usual, with said date in tow.

Although in a way we _were_ lucky--Saul and I, I mean. I would not say I have searched countless ladies' apartments, since, one, I am sure I could count them if I took a moment to seriously consider it, and two, I don't want to give an impression that I have become blasé and jaded about such an event. But I have in any case gone through more than one, or even ten, and had looked in the closets of most of them. The majority of such closets in my experience have either been too small or too full of clothing and accessories to comfortably or even uncomfortably fit two men for any duration, and in this we had undoubtedly gotten a better bargain than we might have--the closet we were in was unusually roomy to begin with, and had far less clothing and boxes in it than one might have expected a woman of her appearance and reputation to have. Maybe they were all off at the cleaners, or maybe she had them elsewhere in the room, I don't know--we had just gotten started on the bedroom when we were interrupted, which was, I suppose, another lucky thing, since if we'd still been in the front room we'd have both had to hide a lot sooner and not known about the closet. At any rate, things were, if not actually something I'd call comfortable, at least tolerable, as far as space went. There was also third feature that some might have called luck, but I just called it brains, or maybe skill, since we did it all the time anyway; when searching a place you ideally don't want the owner to think has been disturbed, it's just common sense to tidy up after yourself as you go.

Of course, there was a downside to that as well, seeing as Miss Betts had seen and felt nothing out of the ordinary when she arrived home, and had therefore seen no reason not to continue on with the evening's (revised) plans. While this was undoubtedly preferable to being in police custody or trying to escape out of a too-small sixth-story window, the longer I leaned back against the closet's rear wall, trying to ignore the sounds coming from beyond the closed closet doors, the more attractive the window was starting to seem. I wasn't sure I was grateful or not that the light in the bedroom was too low to properly leak through the door slats. On one hand, it might have been nice to see enough to try and take my mind off what I was hearing, but on the other hand, it also hid the look my face from Saul, and the look on Saul's from me. This was good, because Saul's expression, when he chooses it to be, can be surprisingly eloquent for a man who plays poker as well as he does, and while with everything else on their minds at that moment the couple on the bed might not notice the occasional small sound from our shifting around, even under those circumstances ignoring suppressed laughter coming from the direction of your closet was probably too much to ask.

Over the years, Wolfe and I have investigated numerous cases that required us to get involved with ladies who are the types to cause other ladies to make comments about their virtue. Katherine Betts would go down in history as being the first of whom I had encountered direct, undeniable, testify-under-oath evidence that she had earned that reputation. Oh, I suppose with enough time and argument you could have convinced me that she and her paramour were playing an unusually full-contact version of tennis on that bed, but you would have had to talk very fast and probably gotten me drunk to begin with, and also be someone I trusted a great deal and an unusually good salesman to boot. Again, Saul probably could have done it, but I don't think he thought it was a match of tennis either.

After a few more moments of this, during which I found occasion to reflect that people are remarkably uninventive when they insist on being verbal during an act that is probably better left to physical expression anyway, I heard Saul shifting around beside me, and after a few more moments of trying to employ selective listening, and some intense concentration, realized he was moving footwear and boxes neatly out of the way so he could sit down. While this made the proposition of getting out of here without her noticing anything later on a bit more dicey, it seemed a reasonable risk, considering we could probably still put everything back approximately where we'd found it, and most people aren't all that familiar with how the bottom of their closets look anyway. Plus, I wasn't sure how long we were going to be stuck in here, and if it was anything like how long I'd have taken under similar circumstances, I didn't want to be standing the whole time, so I started shifting things on my own side of the closet. Sitting didn't really do much for the space, or lack thereof, that we had to work with, and it did nothing at all for the sounds, but at least I was off my feet and could relax a little. If we'd had that deck of Braille cards and knew how to read them we could even have enjoyed ourselves a bit.

Unfortunately, the fact that I no longer had even the distraction of being upright meant my mind had even less to occupy itself with than it had before, and the noises coming from outside the closet weren't decreasing in intensity at all. Under other circumstances I might have found something to think about to distract myself, but I'd already gone over what rotten luck this was, and mentally planned my report to Wolfe both if we got out of here uncaught and if we didn't, and amused myself at what his reaction was likely to be in either case, so now I was at something of a loss. Of course, I could have continued on to think of other things related to the case we were working or this particular chore, except for the fact that we were essentially stalled on the case, _hence_ this particular chore, and I couldn't think of anything really worth thinking about connected to this except a brief speculation into what about this particular man had made Miss Betts deviate from her longstanding date pattern, and frankly that wasn't interesting enough to hold my attention for very long--or riveting enough to keep it through any particularly jarring blasts of sound. Neither was it the sort of situation where I could safely spend time thinking of any more personal distractions, since the entire thing was already too personal in a completely inappropriate way. All in all, if not one of the most uncomfortable _physical_ situations I have ever found myself in while working for Wolfe, it was one of the most ticklish ones as far as the brains and emotions went. I once spent four hours in an apartment building hallway waiting for someone, but at least then there had been spots on the wall to count.

It's a commonly known fact that if you deprive one sense of functions, the other ones will get stronger to compensate, and sitting there in that closet I was getting to test how true that was. On one hand, it was possible, maybe even likely, that those sounds from the bedroom were getting louder, but it was also possible I was just hearing them more clearly, since I also found I could make out Saul's breathing in the dark a bit better. In any case, I was uncomfortably aware of both of them, and of the fact the human male animal is, thanks to the 'animal' bit, unavoidably preprogrammed to certain responses, and that the sounds coming from outside were trying to stir one in me. Which is not to say I am so much an animal that I cannot control such impulses, but it added irritation to an already irritating situation. I could also smell things more clearly, a combination of the slight dust, detergent, and faint perfume smells of the closet, and Saul's aftershave, which was mildly surprising since to look at Saul, you wouldn't think he shaved enough to use aftershave in the first place. That was sound and smell, and taste wasn't really in the picture, although I'm sure if Wolfe had known we were going to be stuck in a closet for some indeterminate amount of time, he would have sent something from Fritz along with us, since he can't stand to see anyone go hungry. As for touch, well, that was another one I could have done without, because the wall behind my back and the floor under my hands weren't giving me anything to work with, so my mind had decided to latch on to the way that Saul's legs were unavoidably brushing up against mine due to the cramped space, with sort of a slow heat building at the contact. I had never thought of Saul in that particular way before, and never would have expected to, but under a situation like that, being one of the aforementioned human male animals, I don't think I can really be blamed for my reaction.

I've been in more than my fair share of awkward situations where discretion is absolutely essential, but this particular combination of factors was a new one on me, and so by the time a few more minutes had passed, my nerves were stretched to the breaking point. I was just considering risking whispering a comment to Saul when he sighed, and after straining my ears so hard to hear something, anything, besides the obvious, it sounded like a gale of wind. I completely froze up, sure that it would be heard. The couple on the bed continued on oblivious, of course, and I relaxed just in time to realize Saul was moving, shifting around to get closer to me. I concluded the situation was driving him as nuts as it was me, and he'd decided that risking a whisper was better than risking something else. I shifted forward, up from the wall, and was surprised when he didn't say anything for a long moment, during which the bedspring started to squeak.

He gave a little exhalation at that, not quite a snort of laughter because it was too soft, which I answered with an agreeing smile that he couldn't see, but probably could feel. I could damn near feel _his_ smile, for that matter; he was close enough that he was breathing on me. "This," he muttered, so softly I barely caught it, which made the chances of it being audible outside the closet even under good circumstances slim, "is probably a bad idea, but.... Hell. This situation." I could agree on that, and was about to make a noise, likewise faint, to convey that agreement, when he stopped me short by the simple expedient of occupying my lips with something else.

Now, I don't mean to imply he slobbered all over me, or even did anything that would make a grown woman pale, although she might blink. As kisses go, I have had more and better from someone who simply fell awkwardly against me; Saul's lips no sooner brushed against mine than they were gone, a brief contact that I probably could have convinced myself was entirely accidental if I wanted to. Which I immediately realized was the point: this was an overture, nothing more, and if I didn't respond in some positive manner he wouldn't push it, and the entire incident could be swept under the rug and comfortably ignored by both of us. I have to admit I was tempted to commence with the sweeping, because even if I had previously considered going that route with Saul, which I have said I hadn't, these were hardly ideal conditions. On the other hand, the situation _was_ getting to me, and besides which, it wasn't hard to conclude that as far as this went, there might never be 'ideal conditions.' Saul and I had that kind of friendship. Which was really the problem with _not_ sweeping--we had a friendship, not a relationship, and until now I'd never considered making it into one. Of course, that lead to a problem _with_ sweeping; now I _was_ considering, and the considering wasn't making me immediately want to take steps to put a stop to things, which was telling in and of itself.

I wanted to say something to him--though I wasn't sure exactly what. I was torn between something witty, possibly about his choice of romantic spots, and something more honest about how my head wasn't sure this was a great idea, but my body was all for it, and my heart seemed to be having a sudden, unexpected bout of indecision, which meant this could go sour on him and maybe he might want to reconsider. Unfortunately either of those things would have required more volume than I dared, and more importantly, more breath than I currently had, since just that brief contact of his mouth against mine had sent a jolt through me. If I had been aware of his legs brushing against mine before, I was now doubly so, and I was even more aware of the fact the position he'd shifted to had one hand braced on the floor just outside my left thigh, and the way I was reacting to the heat coming off of him wasn't what I would call 'friendly' unless I was speaking euphemistically.

I thought about it for another minute. Actually, I thought about it for another twenty or thirty seconds; this was Saul, and it didn't take long, really. I'd spent days, once, trying to figure out whether or not Orrie's character was such that he could do a certain thing, but I'd known if it was Saul it wouldn't have taken me any time at all. So the question wasn't, was I okay with doing this, the question was, was I okay with doing this with Saul, and when you put it that way actually the answer wasn't that hard to get at all.

Like I said, twenty or thirty seconds, but in the dark with nothing to see and really nothing to hear, even ten seconds is a long time, so I'd just made my decision when he apparently took it that I had, only the other way, because I heard him sigh again and felt him start to pull away.

If the situation had been different I'd have let him know what I thought of that with a pithy remark, probably about how a man with his experience in ingratiating himself to people should know better than to give up that easily. Under the circumstances, though, I couldn't even see him to try and catch his eyes, so I had to settle for grabbing his shoulders, which I was actually lucky to catch given how little I could see. For about a second he went kind of rigid, and I decided it was probably better not to let him get back to doubting things, so I dragged him into a _proper_ kiss, which is tricky in the dark but it helps if you've had practice.

He made a little noise, just the kind of ordinary small thing you sometimes do in that situation, but it was enough to freeze both of us for a moment. But the sounds from outside continued, and I didn't really think Miss Betts was clever enough to keep faking that sort of thing even if she did have a suspicion someone was in her closet, so I continued, too. For a moment, he stayed stiff, long enough for me to wonder if I'd misread the entire situation, but then he shifted back forward, pushing until my back was against the wall, and one of his hands was in my hair to match the one of mine that had ended up in his, the other arm back up against my thigh where he was braced against the floor again, with my left leg somehow in between his, which was interesting because I wasn't sure how it had happened.

He was kissing me right, now, or at least he was kissing me like he meant it, which was both good and bad, because I meant it too and given both our personalities it turned the kiss into something of a battle. I won in getting my tongue into his mouth before he got his into mine, but he won when he slid his knee forward until his legs were putting pressure on a bit of my anatomy that had gone from being mildly engaged to completely at attention, which made me shove up against him, hard. Straddling my thigh as he was at that point, this brought to the attention of my hip that a certain part of him was similarly engaged, which made me grin against his mouth in a stupid way, because this was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever done with Saul, which was saying something. He bit my lower lip in response, which made me shove upwards again, and then resettled himself so that all his weight was on his legs. I didn't have to wonder why for very long before I felt his free hand tracing along the top of my pants, then he found the edge of my shirt and unbuttoned the two lowest buttons. When he got his hand on my stomach, even though he still had rubber gloves on, I rocked upwards again, rubbing against him and tightening my one hand on his shoulder to keep from making any sound. The truth was, even though what I was trying to do was to keep from moaning, what I really wanted to do most of all was laugh, because this was ridiculous. Two grown men, wise and experienced detectives, and here we were trapped in a woman's closet, groping each other like horny teenagers. It wasn't just nuts, it was certifiably demented, and when we got out of there we ought to turn ourselves over to the white coats.

He pulled his mouth away from mine, and I had to fight again not to make a sound, torn between relief and disappointment. Relief because his stubble burned against mine, which was interesting in that it was a reminder of who I was kissing if nothing else, and disappointment because Saul knew exactly what he was doing with that kiss, which once again proved his appearance was nothing to go on, since you might have assumed he didn't get to do much with his lips beyond talking. In fact, the opposite was so clearly true that I made a note to make sure Wolfe never learned he was competent in that area; Saul already could have had my job any time he wanted it, and if Wolfe ever learned Saul could probably have done as well with a woman as I could had he wanted to, he'd have started trying to convince Saul that he did want to, since Saul wouldn't have poked at him like I did.

He didn't really stop kissing me, though, just trailed the kisses down from my mouth along my jaw to my neck, where he paused for a while and gave the area a going-over as thoroughly as he had searched the living room couch, earlier. He got his hand loose from my hair and brought it down to join the other one in loosening my tie, which reminded me that I had two hands, too, and they could probably do things to Saul as good as he was doing to me, though I wasn't going to insist on that point if someone wanted to challenge it. Anyway, bothering with his clothing seemed like too much work for me right now, so I just ran my hands down his back hard enough to make sure I could be felt through the layers of his shirt and coat, which made him press up against me a little harder. I didn't find that objectionable, and tried to convey that by rubbing my hip against him, and apparently he didn't find _that_ objectionable, which he conveyed by loosing my collar and sucking on the base of my neck hard enough to leave a hickey. I could tell this was Saul I was with not just by the fact that it was a man's body pressed against mine, but the way he made it a point to place that particular mark low enough that it wouldn't show with my collar buttoned. Now that's consideration.

If I'd been able to talk, I might have said something like, "Christ," or maybe, "Wow," or even possibly, "Could we move to a softer surface, because the floor is killing me." Unfortunately, neither talking nor moving was an option, so I got a hold of his hair again and dragged his face back up to mine to resume kissing again, because he was good enough at that to make me forget about the floor. He went with it, but he nipped me again in payment or punishment or something, which was interesting. Saul kissed a little bit like Lily did when she was feeling particularly playful, which was by no means a bad thing, only he was even more intense, and this was rapidly turning into an even worse idea than it had been when it started, because things were rapidly going to a point that neither one of us could conscionably take them when we were under constraints like these. I can kiss for a long time without things going any further than that, but that was when both I and the other kisser both knew that things were purely recreational and didn't push them farther. Saul didn't kiss like he even knew taking it easy was an option; Saul kissed like serious was the only way to go, and because of that, things were _getting_ serious. In a few more moments, my hands were going to start trying to take his clothes off whether I told them to or not, because they would believe it was just the natural time to be doing that, and who could blame them? But while it might be forgivable, under the circumstances, to find myself necking in a closet with Saul while on an errand for Wolfe, it wouldn't be forgivable under any circumstances to do more than that, and we both knew it. Or at least I think we did, because when I got both my hands on his shoulders and pushed him off, he went, and didn't come back for at least forty seconds, which I thought showed admirable restraint. I would have probably lasted thirty.

He'd gotten my point, though, without me having to say it, which is another one of the joys of working with Saul. At any rate, while his mouth was back at my neck, he wasn't being quite as intense about it, although he was doing plenty to distract me from the floor. I bit my lip to keep down another sound, and rubbed against him again, which was dumb but I couldn't help it. I could feel his smile against my skin, and was about to put my hands to work on a few of his buttons when I felt him suddenly go still against me. After a second of listening, I realized what it was: the sounds from the bedroom had stopped. In fact, if I thought about it, what they'd actually done is reached a crescendo, only I'd been otherwise occupied at the time and hadn't given it my full attention. If I'd been able to look at my watch, I would have, because even with time seeming to stretch out the way it had while we'd just been waiting and trying to ignore the situation, that hadn't seemed to take that long.

"Well that must have been disappointing for her," Saul breathed in my ear, so softly I barely heard him.

Her, nothing. It was disappointing for _me_.

It was also probably for the best--but still, disappointing. Saul gave another one of those quiet sighs, then shifted back off and away from me. I tried to ignore the way I suddenly felt cold without him there in front of me, and also the way parts of my anatomy were expressing a great deal of frustration over the circumstances. I am, as I have said, a human male animal, with certain responses that I cannot entirely control, but I didn't have to give into that particular physical demand, so I didn't. Instead I rebuttoned my shirt and fixed my tie, which wasn't anything like as satisfying as what I had been doing, but was a great deal more practical, and it also calmed me down enough that walking wouldn't be impossibly uncomfortable, should the opportunity arise.

Of course, the situation now demanded I put my mind towards the bit of the evening I'd been trying to avoid thinking about, in hopes that an elephant would suddenly appear and distract them, or possibly that the building would catch fire and they'd evacuate before it became an issue. Namely, we still had to get out of here without being seen. Fortunately, after a second Saul tugged on my sleeve and guided my ear up against the door, and I realized Miss Betts and her date for the evening were having a murmured conversation. I caught the word shower, and shortly after that, a few more squeaks of the mattress, then the sounds of two pairs of feet moving across the floor, and the bathroom door closing.

As I have also said, we _had_ been lucky, if you ignored the first bit of bad luck.

Of course I didn't have to say anything to Saul, because he could work out the program as well as, if not better, than I could. He cracked the closet open just a sliver, then a sliver wider, taking in the view as slowly and as cautiously as possible, until he decided it was apparently clear and opened it completely, while I got into a crouch and got the shoes back in place on my side. Then I took over watching while he did the same on his. The bed was a mess, but the room was deserted, and under the bathroom door a sliver of light could be seen, along with the sound of running water. This was good enough for me, and good enough for Saul, too; when he finished with his tidying, he didn't bother catching my eyes, just headed for the door knowing I would follow. The living room was likewise messier than we'd left it, and we were leaving even less gracefully than we'd entered, but we were at least leaving free and clear, which was something. Neither of us looked at each other until we were out of the building and on the street.

I did take a glance then, but it didn't tell me much. Saul always looked rumpled, at least, and I probably did too, but that wouldn't be commented on when I got home anyway, since the rumpling would probably be put up to the cramped conditions I'd endured, if Wolfe thought about it at all. His face also had a sort of careful neutrality I was more used to seeing across a poker table than at any other time. I thought about making a comment then, but skipped it, turning to head for the car instead, with him falling into stride with me as naturally as he ever had.

We didn't talk on the way from Miss Betts's apartment to the place I had parked Wolfe's Heron, four blocks away. Taking the car had been a somewhat questionable choice, since if we'd been caught in the act we wouldn't have been able to take it back to the garage where it belonged, but we'd needed it for something beforehand, and anyway I was grateful enough now for the chance, since a taxi didn't suit my mood. Sooner or later one of us was going to have something to say, and since I don't like to talk while walking, it would probably be when we got to the transportation, and if it had been a taxi that would have been awkward.

Saul didn't disappoint me in that; when we got to the car, parked in a space on a side street, he paused and hesitated enough to let me know that he wanted to communicate something before he got in, so I paused, too. He looked more awkward than I am used to seeing him. Only once in a while, when something he's working on for Wolfe goes completely south on him, does he get that sort of wariness in his eyes, and given how good Saul is, that once in a while is actually once in a _great_ while. I suppose, technically, this had gone south, but not in a way that would account for this, and anyway, I knew better, or thought I did. This wasn't about us getting interrupted and not getting what we needed, this was about the other thing that had happened.

He didn't disappoint me there, either, because when he did speak what he said was, "It's late enough that he's not going to come up with anything that can't be done until morning. I could catch a cab back to my place if you like."

I knew what he was offering, with that, and frankly I resented it. It was the same thing he'd offered upstairs in the closet, when he made that first brush of lips so tentative--the chance to walk away, pretend this had never happened, and pick up the next time we saw each other as we always had been. I hadn't resented the offer then because it was just polite, when taking a step like that, to give the other player a chance to decline being dealt in--but I hadn't declined, had in fact most vigorously participated. Making the offer again implied that I would change my mind now for some reason, which in turn implied that Saul thought my decision-making capacities had been in some way impaired, or else he wouldn't be trying to go soft on me. That was what I resented, because while I won't deny the circumstances we had been under had been an influence on my decision then, I am not so weak of will that I couldn't have ignored that influence if I had really wanted to, and Saul in any way suggesting that I was reflected poorly on what he thought of me. I told him so.

He smiled with his mouth but not with his eyes, which was interesting because I was used to him doing it the other way around, and also it told me a lot. "I'm not saying you didn't accept being dealt in, Archie, or that you would have made a choice under circumstances that I ought to feel obligated to let you out of. But we're mixing matters of the heart with matters of the head. That's never a good combination, and I knew that even up there. So I was giving you a chance to stop it here--because you're a friend, and I don't want to lose that."

Actually I wasn't sure how much my heart was entering into it just now, but I let that pass. The next time I had an opportunity to set the dinner conversation with Wolfe I would try bringing up varieties of love. I could learn something, and it would probably get him worked up, although he'd never deign to show it to me, out of fear I was contemplating the topic because I'd become more serious than usual about one of my numerous female acquaintances, and expressing any kind of reaction would nudge me into doing something impetuous. "You're not going to lose me as a friend, Saul."

"Maybe not," he said, quietly, but his eyes still looked doubtful, and now his mouth had gotten with the program.

"Maybe nothing. You ought to know me well enough by now to know that I don't consider the women I associate with as undeserving of any attentions beyond the romantic. I regard Lily Rowan as one of my best friends and you know it."

Something briefly flickered in his eyes that I couldn't identify. "You might want to reconsider that sentence for the obvious problem," he said, so I did, and it was so obvious that it actually took me a long moment to spot it, like not seeing a forest for the trees.

"You're going to quibble because I said 'women' instead of 'people'?"

"It's a fairly important distinction."

Well, all right, it was, but not that important, and anyway, I'd made up my mind, even if he didn't believe that, and I was willing to take it on faith, based on evidence previously given, that his had been made up a long time ago. "Saul," I said, flatly, not willing to discuss this on the sidewalk any further, "get in the car."

He looked at me for a long moment, and then smiled again, only right this time, with his eyes but not with his mouth. He got in, and I got in, and made a point of waiting until he finally gave and asked, "So?"

I'd waited because I figured this was coming, and hated to have conversations while driving. You can't look at the other person properly. "So we report to Wolfe."

"I'm going to assume you're being deliberately dense."

"Call it payback."

"All right, then, I'll ask. What after we report?"

I eyed him. He didn't look as tense or doubtful as he had on the sidewalk, but the blank calmness of his poker face was back. "Well," I began slowly, "there are two options there. The first is that we do the sensible, sane thing, and part ways for the evening, and take this up again when we've put the case to bed and are sure we aren't going to end up spending more awkward time in closets."

"And the second option?" He was still the best poker player I knew, and his face hadn't changed at all as I talked, and wasn't giving me any clues as to how he felt about option one. Well, the hell with it, I thought, this is Saul, and you don't have to read him to figure out how he feels about something.

So I flashed him a grin before I gave him the alternative. "We go back to your place and spend more awkward time in a closet. Or on a couch, if you would prefer. If you feel like being even more daring we could try a bed."

Saul blinked, like he hadn't been expecting that, which if true was dumb, and I would have to discuss with him later. A little bit of the blankness went out of his expression, and he started to look more normal, like we were friends and not enemies, or at least opponents at cards. "Wolfe isn't going to be too pleased," he offered, after another moment of silence.

I didn't see why Wolfe even needed to know at this point, but didn't see the point of bringing that up. And if he asked, I wasn't exactly going to deny it, because of all the people I know Wolfe was the least likely to object. I gave Saul another grin before answering, "On the contrary. Wolfe will be delighted. He'll be able to stop worrying that some woman will finally permanently hook me."

A degree of tension I'd never even realized was present left his body, and he smiled at me again, this time with both eyes _and_ mouth, which gave me a much better rating and feeling than the entire previous conversation had. "Whereas some of us know better. Nobody'll ever get all of you, Archie, and he's nuts to worry."

"Damn straight." I eyed him, and maybe he had a point that this was going to be odd or at least awkward, because I wasn't sure how to figure what I wanted to figure, or ask what I wanted to ask to help me figure it. Asking a friend was one thing, asking somebody I was involved with was something else entirely. Balls, I thought, stop worrying about it one way or another and just ask him as Saul. "You okay with that?"

"What, the fact that I wouldn't be getting an exclusive? Now you're the one who's nuts. I knew what I was getting into."

"So did I," I told him, and he smiled at me this time like he believed me. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to get back and get this over with as quickly as possible. There's something I'd like to finish."

Saul was still smiling. "Me too, but you think reporting to Wolfe won't be tricky?"

"Which just goes to show why I'm the assistant and you're the hired help. Trust me, as soon as he catches the drift of why we were interrupted he'll demand that I _don't_ give him details. He likes to think he's above such things. We should be out of there in no time."

"Ever the optimist, Archie?" he asked, lightly, and I returned the smile.

"Well someone around here has to be." I started the car and got us moving.

 

 

 


End file.
